Review: Other Half - Soft Action
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| Label: Big Scary Monsters |
...still, OTHER HALF once again do an awesome job at it. This time around there's really no excuse to sleep on them! With two strong albums in a row they deserve lots of attention, and at least they'll instantly get some more, with their signing to Big Scary Monsters.
OTHER HALF are a trio out of Norwich in the United Kingdom. Two years ago they released their debut album "Big Twenty", on which they portrayed a group of friends in their late 20s, struggling through their lives, getting involed with drugs and dealing, and ultimately fuckin' up a lot of things... mainly their own psyche. The coherent storyline was the one thing that really made the record, though the trio also thrived musically with their brand of noisy, snotty, yet melodic, and extremely confident Post-Hardcore.
Thankfully they pick things up where they left it two years prior. It wasn't like "Big Twenty" was a ride on a unicorn over rainbows into a land of milk and honey... but, yeah, "Soft Action" is even darker. In fact, it's the darkest, bleakest, grimiest, grisliest peace of music I've witnessed all year. But OTHER HALF turn this darkness, this bleakness, this griminess, this grisliness into pure fascination. It's like you somehow slip into a dimly lit, dirty district of a city, with the strangest figures you've ever seen filling it up... and you just know you're better off turning around and call it a day... but somehow, something, anything drags you right in... magically.
OTHER HALF took a step forward in terms of music and production. They sacrificed some of the straight Punkrock in favor of playful, noisy soundscapes. More often than before they slow things down, go midtempo and get moody. That's something that suits them and personally I'd be down if they would decide to further exploit this direction in the future. Something like "Doom Logo" (more of an interlude at 1 minute playtime) gives a glimpse of what they're capable of doing. The production is more expansive, slicker, fuller, everything just sounds better overall. At first, the album felt too long, but getting into it, I gotta admit, that every track offers at least one bright moment... as in "a cool moment". "Slab Thick" might be their catchiest track yet, "In my Wires" follows a similar, hooky route. "All Bets are off" is noisy-as-it-gets, while most of the other tracks do a good job of blending Punk, Noise and atmospheric stuff. Another thing I totally digged before were the vocals by lead singer Cal and the second voice by Soapy. This time around, they seem a bit more separated, Soapy also gets her own track with the awesome closer. They're both pretty talented at what they do and that makes the record so much better. The one thing I always liked about Cal is his smugly, cynical intonation that totally fits to the clever lyrics...
Speaking of lyrics, they are excellent as anticipated. Some characters from "Big Twenty" are featured, mainly Steph, and also David gets another mention. It's kinda cryptic and confusing at times, and I'm not sure how much of a coherent story "Soft Action" is this time around. I don't think it really matters anyway. The lyrics are connected to each other in their bleak, depressive but also very honest outlook at live. And man, they really tear it up at the ending stretch of the record with an evil, lyrical imagery full of creative wording, meaningful stories and memorable lines. Somehow I got "Fight Club"-vibes out of it, though I can't define why, but whatever. "Every Future" is tremendous in that regard, as is "Ugly Reunion" and "If your write the Way you talk". And there, right there, with the closer... the artwork of the record suddenly makes sense to me. This kinda looks like an ulceration to me, something that you need to cut out before it gets too fucking huge. [Ultimately it's just toyshop slime, as they revealed on IG]
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